Wednesday, November 27, 2013

10 Picture Books for Thanksgiving

Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, this post is too late you be useful to you, but maybe you'll pin it for next year? We got nearly 20 Thanksgiving/fall books from the library this month and I wanted to share our favorites, which just happened to be of the nice round number 10. I'll admit, a few of these books were more of my pick than Lucia's as they were a bit over the head of an almost-two-year old, so this list isn't just for toddlers, but for older children as well.

A really silly turkey book in the vein of "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" only the turkeys are falling off a fence for various reasons (including one riding a boar). Was so off the wall, it even made my husband laugh.

Not Thanksgiving specific, a sweet book that helps children to understand the concept of thankfulness by mentioning the things, big and small, that they might feel thankfulness for. Lucia was stuck on the cookies, so maybe we'll have to pick this one up again next year.

I loved this book - the rhymes were very soothing, the book built phrases upon each other, the illustrations were gorgeous. Lucia was a little young for this one, although she enjoyed looking at the pictures.

This one is also not specific to Thanksgiving, but ties into the fall and harvest. I am a huge fan of Tomie dePaola in general and Strega Nona in particular, so this was a no-brainer for us. Although it's a bit lengthy for Lucia's attention span, she had no problem staying engaged in the story and following along with the beautiful illustrations.

This is one of my absolute favorites. It's hard to pinpoint just a few of it's merits. Unlike most Thanksgiving books, it features Americans of various ethnicities. The main character is a young Puerto Rican boy, Miguel, who lives in New York with a multigenerational family and whose father is gone as a truck driver. His father send him a turkey to "fatten up" for Thanksgiving and Miguel predictably becomes attached to the point that the turkey, Gracias, even follows him into Mass one day. I don't want to give too much away but this book is charming. Charming!

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